Hall Capital Signs on for 14K s/f

850 Third Avenue has snagged a financial firm for rents almost double what the avenue was trading for during the doldrums of the recession only a few years ago.

850 Third Avenue.

Hall Capital Partners LLC, an investment management firm, has signed a lease for the 630,000 square foot building’s entire 19th floor, a 14,000 square foot space. Asking rent for the floor was in the mid $60s per square foot and Matt Astrachan, an executive with the real estate services firm Jones Lang LaSalle who leads the building’s leasing team and negotiated the deal, said that the lease was roughly within that range, though he declined to disclose the transaction’s specific economics because of confidentiality rules in the deal.

Back in 2009 and 2010, when leasing activity slowed to a crawl in the city, space on Third Avenue, which traditionally has traded at a steep discount to other more pricey precincts of the neighborhood like the Plaza District and Park Avenue, drooped into $40s per square foot and even lower in special situations such as sublet deals.

Hall Capital will be moving from 597 Fifth Avenue. The company was represented by Cushman & Wakefield executives Barry Zeller and Andrew Ross in the lease, which stretches for nine years.

Under the leasing stewardship of Mr. Astrachan’s JLL team, 850 Third Avenue has been an active building in recent months.

The Gerson Lehrman Group, a business consulting firm, renewed its 36,000 square foot office in the building, the entire ninth floor. Gerson Lehrman has previously subleased the space from Instinet, a firm that executes stock trades.

Shorenstein, the building’s landlord and the owner of a number of commercial properties in the city, itself relocated into the property last year, relocating its New York headquarters onto the building’s 14,000 square foot 17th floor.

Touch Tunes, a company that provides digital juke boxes to bars and restaurants, expanded at the property last year as well, growing from 8,000 square feet to 13,000 square feet on the 15th floor. Mr. Astrachan said about 300,000 square feet has been leased at the property over the past year or so.The deals include a 40,000 square foot renewal with the law firm Shearman & Sterling and another 40,000 square foot deal earlier last year with Radio One, a radio broadcasting company, which took the building’s entire third floor.

More leases appear to be on the way.

Mr. Astrachan said that Shorenstein has prepared the building’s vacant 30,000 square foot 13th floor for deals by “white-boxing” it, a process in which the floor is preliminarily prepared by doing basic work such as wall and ceiling installations or paint work.

“We’re going to try to first get an anchor for it then lease out of the rest of floor in smaller units,” Mr. Astrachan explained.

He said that the floor has seen activity, with a hedge fund and a boutique bank both in early talks to potentially do a deal for a portion of the space. He also said the building’s tenth and 11th floors have activity.